“- Welcome to the evening news. In the early hours of yesterday morning, the body of a female victim was found on the riverbank in the northern part of Yuqing District… According to the Public Security Bureau, the body bore multiple bite marks inflicted by a person. The bureau believes the case may be connected to the recent serial murders and advises residents to avoid going out at night…”
Late at night, just before bed, Gu Tong hummed as she washed the dishes.
Humans really were easy to tame.
Chen Qinyao hadn’t made a fuss after dinner and had even gone to bed without complaint.
She neither cried nor made a scene.
She was practically a slave.
Seeing how smoothly her plan was going put Gu Tong in a good mood.
She hummed as she washed the dishes.
Soon, all it would take was a little more time to drive this Mad Dog insane with an endless, meaningless life.
But…
Gu Tong lowered her head and rubbed her stomach.
She was so hungry.
This wasn’t physical hunger. It was a bloodthirsty craving that came from her soul.
“Gu Tong’s” stomach was full, but “Ba Hui’s” wasn’t.
Monsters fed on the souls and fear of intelligent creatures.
She’d have to find a way to go out and get something to eat later.
In the cramped rental apartment, the sisters could only sleep in a bunk bed.
Chen Qinyao had always slept on the top bunk, but to make sure she could be useful six years from now, Gu Tong generously gave the bottom bunk to the little girl.
Of course, the girl didn’t seem to dare move to the bottom bunk.
She didn’t know why her older sister had suddenly changed her ways.
Someone used to surviving in the dark could get burned by the light.
In the end, Gu Tong had to force the matter and toss the girl onto the bottom bunk, where she lay down as if resigned to her fate.
Late that night, Gu Tong turned off the news on her phone and put out the light.
Lying on the bottom bunk, Chen Qinyao stared blankly into the darkness around her.
She had school tomorrow, so she should have gone to bed early, but she tossed and turned and couldn’t fall asleep.
She didn’t understand what had happened to her older sister. She’d once heard a rumor called “the rally before death.”
They said that when people sensed they were about to die, their personalities might change.
Someone short-tempered might grow quiet, while someone warm might turn cold.
Could that be what was happening to her sister…?
She glanced toward the top bunk through the darkness.
Her sister was sleeping up there.
It was midnight, and the whole apartment was silent.
Only the distant wail of sirens could be heard now and then.
With a click, the bed suddenly began to shake slightly.
A figure was climbing down the ladder.
Was it her sister?
Chen Qinyao didn’t dare make a sound. She lay on her side with her back to the ladder.
She could tell her sister stood beside the bed for a little while, then she heard the soft rustle of clothes being put on.
A few minutes later, the door shut with a click.
Only after the apartment fell silent again did Chen Qinyao creep to her feet and look around the dark room.
It was midnight. Why had her sister gone out at this hour…?
She didn’t know why her sister would leave now, but reason told her she should stay put.
The body remembered pain better than the mind did.
Whenever she thought of the price of disobedience, phantom pain flared across the places hidden beneath her clothes, where outsiders couldn’t easily see the marks left by the belt and cane.
Instinctively, the girl pulled the blanket over her head, lay back down, and obediently waited for her sister to return.
But once an idea entered her mind, it was hard to get rid of.
And with her sister acting so strangely today, Chen Qinyao couldn’t stop worrying.
The more she thought about it, the more frightened and anxious she became.
Although the war had ended, people had grown used to staying indoors after dark.
Her sister never went out at this hour.
The minutes passed, and her sister didn’t come back.
Chen Qinyao had never felt time drag so slowly.
On an ordinary day, she would have pulled the blanket over her head and shut out the world.
But today, her sister had seemed like a different person. She’d been gentle, hadn’t hit her, and had even made her dinner.
People could endure the dark if they’d never seen the sun.
But once they’d seen it, they could never go back to the dark.
The girl slowly felt her way out of bed, making the bed frame creak again and again.
Worry finally overcame reason.
She felt her way off the bed and got dressed.
She was going to look for her sister.
After Sanshan entered its long rainy season, thick clouds covered the last of the moonlight.
The lights along the street were as faint as fireflies.
Gu Tong opened her umbrella and stood in the deserted street.
Once she’d confirmed there were no witnesses around, she released the magical energy she’d kept suppressed inside her.
In the air tainted by her magic, supernatural forces began to replace objective reality.
In the blink of an eye, the girl’s figure vanished into the rain.
After a few quick leaps, thunder rumbled across the sky again.
A flash of lightning illuminated Gu Tong standing atop the security wall.
The evening breeze carried fine rain and gently lifted the hem of her clothes.
The air was thick with the smell of rain.
She looked behind her and could make out the dark outline of the city wall through the distant mist.
That was the edge of the inner ring, the border between civilization and wilderness.
At a glance, Sanshan had barely changed between six years ago and six years later.
It was still physically divided into the core district, inner ring, and outer ring.
To defend against the monsters and mutants on the wasteland, the people of Sanshan had built a hundred-meter-high barrier along the edge of the inner ring, using special materials and funding from the Soruo Group.
Combined with the reality-stabilizing devices in the underground fortress in the core district, it had completely prevented rifts to the Abyssal Sea from appearing inside the city.
They’d also built countless red emergency walls inside the high walls, which could be raised and lowered by human control to divide the neighborhoods and prevent emergencies from spreading through the city.
Even Ba Hui could feel the distant city wall’s presence and instinctively hated it.
As for the outer ring, the barrier’s energy spread outward and kept weaker monsters from approaching, but it wasn’t foolproof.
The outer ring remained trapped in a cycle of poverty and violent crime, entirely self-governing and all but cut off from the inner ring.
People in the inner ring looked down on those in the outer ring, even though many inner-ring residents lived at the very edge of the city, only a wall away from the outer ring.
At the thought that she, the strongest monster, had fallen so low as to sneak out in the middle of the night to find food, Ba Hui wanted to blast the whole city to rubble with a single beam of light.
‘Be patient, Ba Hui. Be patient. It’s all for the sake of the ultimate plan.’
The injuries she’d sustained before reversing time hadn’t fully healed.
She needed time to slowly recover her strength.
She also needed to lure in the strongest Magical Girl of the future and turn her into a force she could command.
Though for a monster, this was a bold attempt without precedent.
Monsters excelled at destruction and annihilation. None had ever tried to “nurture” anyone.
For that purpose, she’d even spent what little money “Gu Tong” had on a parenting guide.
It would help her make sure Chen Qinyao didn’t die too young while still ensuring her eventual fall.
The results proved she’d done a good job.
Chen Qinyao had gone to bed early after dinner without a single complaint and hadn’t dared resist the cage she’d built for her.
At the thought, Gu Tong couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from turning up.
Heh. The strongest Magical Girl, the bane of monsters—she was just a snot-nosed little brat. She’d never escape Ba Hui’s grasp.
As she thought this, Gu Tong looked toward the distant core district.
The contrast between the desolation here and the city’s prosperity in the distance could be drawn with a simple, clear line.
On one side was a false prosperity watered by the violence and authority of megacorporations.
On the other was a reality built atop postwar ruins and enormous abandoned construction projects.
That stark line was the truest reflection of Sanshan.
Ba Hui tried to stir the magic inside her.
The familiar surging power answered her call, but she could tell its total volume hadn’t changed.
No matter how she released it, she couldn’t produce much.
Even her movement speed was more than twice as slow as before she’d crossed through time.
It felt like trying to draw water from an entire reservoir with a syringe.
Only after Ba Hui reduced her output could she feel the scent of magic seeping into the air.
It seemed she’d need more time to recover her strength.
She remembered seeing a documentary about humanity’s research into Espers.
Humans believed magic wasn’t generated by Espers themselves.
Instead, Espers could briefly connect to the Abyssal Sea and create an extremely tiny anchor to it, one small enough to let its energy flow through without allowing large numbers of monsters to appear.
This created an environment where they could use magic.
Supernatural powers were like a kind of programming language.
They could only run properly in the right environment.
Humans were just humans, after all.
To a monster, they themselves were anchors to the Abyssal Sea.
Magic was the foundation of their existence.
She planned to head to the edge of the core district, where there were plenty of red-light districts.
She would find suitable prey there.
In the rain-laden evening breeze, the girl slowly crouched low.
Magic rapidly filled the surrounding air as the power of the abyss dismantled reality and gradually turned the impossible into fact.
The gathering magic transformed Ba Hui into a streak of red light, and she vanished from the spot.
But she didn’t notice that the little girl from her apartment had followed her out—and gotten lost while searching for her…
Lightning burst through the clouds, turning the gloomy alley as bright as day for an instant before plunging it back into darkness.
The rain was so heavy that even her raincoat couldn’t keep it out.
Raindrops splashed onto her arms, raising goose bumps in the chill.
Little Chen Qinyao could only use the faint light from her phone to see the path ahead.
Rainwater filled the sewers, forcing filthy water and trash back out into the streets and alleys.
A foul smell hung in the air.
Her shoes splashed through puddles, making a monotonous, squelching sound that annoyed her.
“Where did Sister go…?”
There weren’t many routes near their rental apartment.
The poor district cut off the surrounding area, so in theory, her sister couldn’t have gone far in such a short time.
But for some reason, her sister had disappeared in a matter of minutes.
No matter how hard Chen Qinyao searched, it was as if she’d vanished into thin air.
Where could someone go?
Had something happened to her sister?!
Only now, standing in the rain, did Chen Qinyao realize how cold she was.
She’d rushed out wearing only a jacket, and she still had her slippers on.
The streets around her were pitch-black and deserted.
The only sounds were sirens from a few blocks away, the occasional passing train, and a news broadcast coming from someone’s home.
Where had her sister gone…?
The girl wondered if her sister had gone in another direction.
She turned around to retrace her steps and look for her sister elsewhere, but the farther she walked, the more the way home felt… unfamiliar.
She remembered that she hadn’t gone far from home, only six or seven hundred meters at most.
And the route was definitely right.
Everything in front of her looked familiar, yet the farther she walked, the more strangely unfamiliar it seemed, as if some details were always just a little off.
For some reason, she also felt weighed down.
Her chest felt tight, and something about the air around her seemed wrong.
She couldn’t put the feeling into words, but she could feel it.
The girl hurried her pace. She just had to get home.
Standing at the street corner, the girl could already see the outline of the apartment building where she lived.
She quickened her pace, splashing water onto her socks.
Home, the place where she felt safe, was right in front of her.
She clutched the key to the front door in her hand.
Once she got inside, she could put all her worries aside.
But the next moment, she suddenly stopped.
Something was wrong.
The girl’s pupils shrank.
Home was just a short distance away.
At the end of the path leading back, a pitch-black curtain blocked out everything.
At first, she’d thought the streetlights were broken.
There was no shortage of broken things at the edge of the inner ring.
But when she walked closer, she saw that it wasn’t a wall.
It was a pitch-black figure.
That curtain of darkness was alive.
The figure was very tall, but horribly misshapen.
At a glance, it looked like a hunched man in a black coat, standing in the middle of the street and blocking the narrow road with his broad frame.
Chen Qinyao instinctively backed away a few steps.
The hunched man stared toward the girl’s home, surrounded only by the patter of rain.
At that moment, Chen Qinyao seemed to stop hearing the sounds outside.
The sirens, the news broadcast, even the wind blowing through the city—all of it disappeared.
Only the patter of rain remained beside her ears.
Chen Qinyao backed away one small step at a time, not daring to make the slightest sound.
He looked like nothing more than a hunched man, but some instinct told her not to attract his attention.
She didn’t want to see him turn around, either.
“Tap, tap.”
It sounded like something knocking.
She looked up and saw that the hunched man seemed to be leaning against the wall outside her home, his long, thin fingers gently tapping on the tightly shut window.
Why was he knocking on her window…?
“Tap, tap.”
Two more knocks.
The motion was so strange, almost as if the man… were knocking on a door.
The girl instinctively tried to step back, but felt her foot land on something soft.
She looked down, and her pupils suddenly shrank.
In the light was a human hand lying on the ground, chewed down to half its length!